Authors: Lambil & Cauvin
Age: 8 years and up
Size: 21.7 x 28.7 cm
Number of pages: 48 colour pages
Publication: January 2018
ISBN: 9781849183833
Price: £6.99 inc. VAT
Stark’s constant, reckless charging has once again depleted
the 22nd Cavalry. Faced with an understandable dearth of volunteers, the Army’s
brass drafts – without telling them – some freshly arrived immigrants. And
Blutch and Chesterfield
are tasked with instructing them in the art of riding down the enemy. But
there’s a problem: the new recruits only speak Russian! And while those
Cossacks are already fantastic riders, they have no desire to die for the glory
of the Union ...
I always have to point out to people that, if you go by the
Lambil art you may think this is just daft “goofball” fun. Well, there is that but the stories never
shirk away from the fact that men are dying and being thrown into battles as
cannot fodder –by this period people assume that the old European marching en
masse into enemy gunfire was a thing of, say for the Americans, a thing of the
Revolutionary War of 1775-1783. It was
not.
Here we see Sgt. Chesterfield try various nasty ways to make
the Russian recruits –there was a plentiful supply of European immigrant cannon
fodder at the time- understand they are there to train and fight. Something Blutch is not keen on since he
knows these men will be just cannon fodder and though Chesterfield knows this
he is in the US Army and been given his orders.
Cauvin adds all of this seriousness into the goofyness and
humour but after the first outing of the new cavalrymen the General is almost
shocked to hear that all of them have returned from Captain Stark’s latest
suicide run.
Never let the cartoony art fool you.
An excellent series.
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